The Letter of the Contract Part 13

He looked at the pa.s.senger-list again. Yes; that was her name: _Mrs.

Theodore Lacon_. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He, too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous: _Mr. C.

Walker_. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she might not know that he was on the ship at all.

The thought suggested a line of action. He was in his cabin at the time.

He could stay there. Looking through the port-hole, he saw that they had not yet pa.s.sed the Statue of Liberty. While in dock he had kept to his room, in order to read letters and avoid the crowd that throngs the deck of an outgoing steamer. There was every likelihood that she hadn't seen him any more than he had seen her. If he kept himself hidden she might never know! He could avoid the decks by day and take his exercise by night. By night, too, he could creep into the smoking-room and get a little change. But he would stay away from the general gathering-places on the ship and spare her what pain he could. That they should meet as strangers was out of the question. That they should meet as social acquaintances was even more so. They had been all to each other--and they had been nothing. No other relation was possible.

So the week pa.s.sed, and they reached Liverpool. He was purposely among the last to go ash.o.r.e. In the great shed where the luggage was distributed under initial letters, he was glad to remember that W was so far from L. Nevertheless, he allowed his eye to roam toward section L, but found no one there whom he recognized. He ran over in his mind the various chances that she might not have come. It was no uncommon thing to read in a list of pa.s.sengers the names of people who hadn't sailed.

He had done so before.

Later he scanned, as discreetly as he could, the occupants of the special train that was to take them to London. He couldn't see that she was anywhere among them. He sighed, but whether from relief or disappointment he was not sure.

As it was one o'clock, he took his seat in the luncheon-car, making sure in advance that she wasn't there. He had come to the conclusion by this time that she was not on the train at all--that she hadn't been on the steamer. He did not, however, regret his precautions, because--well, because the sense of her proximity had made him feel as he had felt in the days--fourteen years ago now--when the very streets of the city in which she lived were hallowed ground. He had supposed that emotion dead.

Probably it was dead. It must be dead. It was merely that, owing to the constraint of the voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of her. It was only the reflex of something past. It could be explained psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly, perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was it, he repeated to himself as he lunched. It was nothing to be afraid of, nothing incongruous with the fact that he had left a wife and child in New York. It was not an emotion; it was only the echo, the shadow, the memory of an emotion, gone before it could be seized.

And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was white, or pink and white, with the bursting may.

He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow pa.s.sage. As she stood with one arm on the bra.s.s rail that crossed the window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand.

She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without personality.

It was the sense that some one desired to pa.s.s that caused her to turn slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of her face--not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a place she didn't know.

"Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she said anything more. "What are you doing here?"

He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I didn't know--"

"That I was on it, too?"

"I--I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was the name in the list--"

"But I never saw you. There weren't many pa.s.sengers. I was always on deck."

Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the gloved one.

He felt his own confusion pa.s.sing. It was so natural to be with her, so right. His voice grew steadier as he said:

"I didn't go about very much. I was afraid--"

She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And you're--alone?"

He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recognize that fact from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them.

Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in answering.

"Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?"

She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in the overhead racks, and her books and ill.u.s.trated papers lay on the cushions. "I'm on my way to join my--" It was her turn to color.

He nodded quickly, to show that he understood.

"He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something.

"I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I wanted to stay with the children at Towers--"

It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?"

"Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again."

"I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to look like you."

She smiled for the first time. "Oh, but _I_ think he looks like _you_."

"No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's--"

"A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the scarlet fever--"

"Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do you remember the night--?"

She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh, that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are braver than fathers at times like that."

"It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?"

"Three and five months."

"And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way, won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?"

They were being pushed and jostled by guards and pa.s.sengers. Between sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming.

She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the length and width of the compartment, the distance marking the other gulf between them.

She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing, and then at the open country. The children, with their needs, their ailments, their future careers, could not but be the natural theme between them. It lasted while they pa.s.sed Nuneaton, Rugby, and Stafford, and were well on their way to London. Suddenly he risked a question:

"Do they--understand?"

She was plainly agitated that he should disturb the ashes that buried their past. Her eyes shot him one piteous, appealing glance, after which they returned to the pa.s.sing landscape. "Tom understands," she said, at last. "Chippie takes it for granted."

"Takes it for granted--how?"

"Just as they both did--till Tom began to get a little more experience.

It seemed to them quite the ordinary thing to have"--she hesitated and colored--"to have two fathers."

He winced, but risked another question:

"What makes you think that Tom's discovered it to be unusual?"

"Because he's said so."

"In what way? Do you mind telling me?"

"I'd rather _not_ tell you."

"But if I insist?"